Prism Panes and Those Voices in the Wilderness • Nikki Ocean

“Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”
St. Paul (Corinthians 2)

Excerpt from “The Alchemist”

“The boy became friendly with the camel driver who traveled alongside him. At night, as they sat around the fire, the boy related to the driver his adventures as a shepherd.

During one of these conversations, the driver told of his own life.

‘I used to live near El Cairum,’ he said. ‘I had my orchard, my children, and a life that would change not at all until I died.

One day, the earth began to tremble, and the Nile overflowed its banks. It was something that I thought could happen only to others, never to me. My neighbors feared they would lose all their olive trees in the flood, and my wife was afraid that we would lose our children. I thought that everything I owned would be destroyed.

The land was ruined, and I had to find some other way to earn a living. So now I’m a camel driver.

But that disaster taught me to understand the word of Allah: people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.

We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.’”

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

CONFLICT IS THE GENESIS OF CREATION.

“We don’t seek the painful experiences that hew our identities,
but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences.

“Ease makes less of an impression on us than struggle.
We could have been ourselves without our delights,
but not without the misfortunes that drive our search for meaning.